


The Green fields of France

by TayBartlett9000



Category: Blackadder
Genre: "the green fields of france", Baldrick - Freeform, Dwelling on the past, Edmund Blackadder's grandson, Edmund Blackadder's great grandson, France - Freeform, Gen, George - Freeform, World War I, the horror of war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 10:27:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8010073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TayBartlett9000/pseuds/TayBartlett9000
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Blackadder, the great grandson of Captain Edmund Blackadder, journeys to France to find the grave of his great grandfather and the men whom he shared a trench with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Green fields of France

The Green Fields of France.

By Tay Bartlett.

 

Sam wandered alone up the slight hill, the warmth of the sun burning the back of his neck as he finally reached the top. His legs were aching and so was his head. He had been walking all day to reach this place, and he was almost ready to collapse. His head ached savagely, assaulted by the hot Summer sun. His skin had been burned a deep brown and his blue eyes stood out in stark relief from his sun tanned face. He lifted a hand, wiping a strand of black hair away from his forhead.

After a short pause to gather both his breath and his thoughts, Sam walked on.  The sky above him was the deep blue of sapphires and the green grass beneath his feet glittered like a field of emeralds in the Summer sun. Around him, the birds added their melodies to the  ambience of the day as Sam strolled on.

All around him were fields full of shell holes and grave stones that  poked up through the ground like teeth in an open mouth.  These grim looking grey stones were complete with row upon row of writing that,  if one cared to get closer, would reviel over a thousand names, all of them the names of people who had  been lost in the red sea of  war. There were names beyond counting. As Sam turned  right, he allowed his tired and aching eyes to scan the row upon row of graves, searching for the one name that he  had travelled across to France to see.

A light breeze blew up from the west and caused the trees to whisper around Sam, standing in the middle of the  make shift graveyard.  He felt intimidated and unbelieveably small surrounded by the rows of gravestones that marked the resting places of the fallen soldiers. An eary feeling stole over him as he moved further into the  graveyard. Certain  names, the writing etched in the stone seemed to leep out at Sam, each one appearing more clearly in his mind.

At long last, Sam found the name he was looking for. The single gravestone in question  bore four names, each one faded almost into invisibility upon the warn grey stone. In a dazed reverie, Sam stood before  it, eyes focused exclusively upon the faded lettering as he committed it to the kind of memory that no photo albem could ever capture.

Each name rang a curious and age old bell, as if he was being reunited with friends long forgotten. Kevin Darling. 1889. George, 1896. S Baldrick. 1895. And at the bottom, his grand father, Edmund Blackadder, born 1870. Every name upon this single gravestone had the same date of death, 1917, one year before the end of the war that  these four men had layn down their lives to fight. They had all died on the same day, had maybe even  lived in the same dugout, each one suffering his fellows’ hardships, each one struggling on in total futility as the generals at the top made all the decisions.

Sam stared at the name at the bottom, Edmund Blackadder. He had heard many a story about his great grand father, about how he had been one of those men who could talk their way out of a room with no doors. About how he was one of those people who was entirely committed to serving himself, but always seemed to awquire a strange and dedicated group of friends and followers while doing so. Sam knew not whether these rumours were true, but didn’t think they mattered. Nobody alive would  ever be able to ask him.

Sam briefly wondered who hsi great grand fathers fellows had been. They were just names to him yet he knew that the men who lay beneath the dry  soil had had lives and cares of their own. Who had Kevin Darling been? What   had  George’s sir name been?  What had  the S in  Mr  Baldrick’s name stood for?

He could of course  answer none of these questions. Yet he couldn’t help but think of them as he delved into his  ruck sack for his phone. He stood  and took a photo of the old gravestone, making sure that he could clearly see all four names written upon it.

He turned to go, casting his eye for the final time over the faded letters of Edmund Blackadder’s name. He cared not for the rumours that had attached  themselves to his  great grand father’s memory. He preferred to imagine how the man may have been over one hundred years ago. Had he been a captain? Had he been in command of his dugout, giving out the orders and  ensuring that his fellow soldiers obeyed them? Had he laughed and sang with the rest of the men, joining in their dreams and spoken musings of home? Sam supposed that he may have done. He must have had someone that he had cared about. A wife, or a girl friend maybe, or even a close friend.  Sam could imagine him standing there, resplendent in his soldiers’ uniform and probably hating every minute of it, sitting and eating fake food with the rest of his companions and trying to look upon the bright side of what had become hsi life. Sam could imagine his great grand father living out each and every day in the trenches that had been scattered under the plow many years back, ending every one of those days with a prayer to the heavens, greatful that he had survived  another day of brutal warfare.

Then Sam Blackadder’s mind wandered to the darkest of these thoughts. How had his great grand father felt on the day of the big push? How had he felt as he had stood with his men, preparing to advance and rise out of the trenches  to throw all that he could at the enemy? Had he been scared? Sam knew that he hadn’t survived. This gravestone proved that, but had Edmund Blackadder been hoping to? Had he hoped to be the one man saved from the hail of bullets that had rained down upon them, or would he have been glad to have escaped from the rest of world war 1?   Or would he have been resigned to the inevitable truth, that being his almost certain death?  Sam tried to  see  through his grand father’s eyes, picturing the scene of barbed wire, pot holes and shells  scattered everywhere, a constant reminder of  death  that had been an ever present shadow, lerking beyond the walls of every dugout. His  great grand father had climbed out of those dugouts,  his  bayonet in hand, hoping to God that he  would survive but knowing in some deep corner of his mind that he probably wouldn’t. The grim certainty would have been bad enough,  knowing that you  were about to die with no understanding of who or what you were fighting for, but putting your trust and faith in the generals to know. What had it been like, to know that in a moment, your life would be snatched away from you, to   be replaced by other  gullable idiots   who had signed up in the nighieve belief that war was somehow a  glamourous thing.

Did his great grand father know that  his great grand son, Sam Blackadder, a  young man from  a tiny village in England had journeyed across the sea to France to  visit his grave side?  Did he know that over a century later, people were still coming to the fields of Belgium and France to pay their respects to those who had fallen? Woudl Edmund Blackadder be greatful at the recognission, or simply  disgusted by the fact that a century had passed and people   still hadn’t learned the  lessons of the past? If he had been in a position to judge, Sam would have. People never learned, even when the evidence stared them right in the face.

Sam walked away across the parched  fields, back to where he had come from, certain that   though  Edmund Blackadder’s body lay in  no man’s land,  his memory would be carried around by his great grandson for the rest of his life.  Sam would return some day, to the same spot, maybe even with  a son of his own. He would stand by that same gravestone, telling his son about the trials and suffering caused by the  Great War. He would tell him of his  great grandfather in the vein hope that their memory would be kept alive.  For if the meories of  the soldiers endured,  maybe humanity would endure also. Sam  knew that war would never become a thing of the past. War would always exist somewhere, but if people   remembered what wars were  faught for, maybe they would be able to keep humanity alive.

“The sun shines bright on the green fields of France,

The warm summer breeze makes the red poppies dance.

The trenches are scattered long under the plow,

No gas, no barbed wire, there’s no gun firing now.

But here in this graveyard, it is still no man’s land,

The countless  white crosses are mute where they stand,

To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man,

Of a whole generation that were butchered and damned.”


End file.
